


all the roads that led to you

by circa (stealthturtle)



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Angst, BAMF Stiles, Coming of Age, Fluff, M/M, Not Canon Compliant, Porn with Feelings, Praise Kink, Top Derek, definitely, kind of a lot of fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-03
Updated: 2020-06-03
Packaged: 2021-03-04 00:15:24
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,253
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24524473
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stealthturtle/pseuds/circa
Summary: Stiles is seventeen and he’s a little -a lot- way in over his head, because he’s got Derek’s shirt stuffed under his pillow and his father’s distrust coiling heavily in his gut every time he knocks on the door to hear another lie. But see, Scott hasn’t been returning his calls and Erica’s breaking his heart, so he’s going to keep going back to Derek’s shoddy loft and let himself be taken apart, and he’s going to keep giving, giving,goneon the feeling of hot lips on the back of his neck and clawed hands promising him he’ll be held together at the seams.And it’s going to be enough for now.
Relationships: Derek Hale/Stiles Stilinski
Comments: 63
Kudos: 732





	all the roads that led to you

**Author's Note:**

> I REALLY WANTED TO WRITE PORN WITH FEELINGS SO. HERE. HAVE IT
> 
> also i challenged myself to write this a little drunk. it was a fucking blast. 
> 
> none of this is canon compliant, fair warning. i overindulged in my poetic license

It started when Erica and Boyd disappeared. 

On a night so empty not even the cicadas sounded their presence and the rabbits burrowed deeply in the Earth, escaping from the howl that tore through the Preserve so loudly that the Sheriff’s Department knocked on every door that night to tell everyone it’s best to keep their doors and windows tightly shut. 

And yet the silence that came after it was so deafening, so incredibly haunting that it pulled at Stiles’ spine like he was made of nothing but strings. He ventured - _charged_ \- into the down-trodden miserable six-and-a-half walls that Derek called real estate, and he put his hands on the shoulders of an apex predator brought down to his knees by the grief that without a doubt reminded him of his family’s ashes.

Stiles knows this, knows the look of loss and abject horror on someone’s face, primarily because he wore that exact expression at the foot of Claudia’s bed in April. So when he picks up this hulking figure of a man by the shoulders, he knows to touch lightly, to tread gently and with care not to let the mask of barely-holding-it-together slip from Derek’s face, crash down to shards on the floor.

“You need to rest,” Stiles says with a coaxing tug.

“Go home, Stiles,” he whispers, but the dissent is lost on the younger man because he _knows_ this. This is the start of the fall, and Stiles is prepared to force his way down to catch him. 

He tugs again, and Derek sways into this without so much as a snarl. He leads them to the bedroom where the sheets are as twisted as his stomach feels, and when he lies down Derek tumbles into the mattress with him. The Alpha feels hollow, for all that he is solid muscle and heavy bones and the crushing weight of the guilt he carries around. But he is what feathers are made of tonight, and Stiles knows this is dangerous, because without Derek - strong, solid, surly Derek - then what the hell chance do they have at getting Erica and Boyd back? What happens when the Alpha pack comes back to collect more of their spoils of war? 

The questions lodge themselves in Stiles’ ribcage, where it hangs precariously near his lungs, threatening to squeeze them into sending him to find where his breath went when fear will take it away. But he gulps down the impending feeling of a panic attack and instead, he holds this two-hundred-pound werewolf close to his person, and he says, “We’ll find them. We’ll be fine.” 

Derek could probably hear the lie in his heart when he says the word ‘fine’, because they haven’t been fine for seven months now, and Derek hasn’t been fine for seven years and counting. But there must be something in the strength of his voice, because that’s how they both fall asleep that night: Stiles on his back with a werewolf heavily anchoring him down on a surprisingly downy bed. 

That’s also how he wakes up, with Derek’s furrowed eyebrow in plain sight where his head lays on Stiles’ chest like an anvil. He only feels a little guilty about slipping out of the loft in his haste to get to school, thanking his lucky stars for his father’s double shifts not for the first time. 

Scott’s mourning in his own way, rages during Lacrosse because he feels their absence, too. Erica always stole Scott’s pudding cup and Stiles counted on Boyd to listen in Economics for the both of them since they were in different classes this term. They all felt the hole the two left behind and it rattles them like paper in the wind. But Scott has Allison, and Allison has Lydia, and Lydia has her stellar compartmentalization skills to fall back on. So Stiles hangs back when the group trudges on with their lives forward, and that’s when he sends a message in the middle of English to Derek, _I’m coming over tonight._

It’s a testament to their relationship forged through shared grief and five-too-many life-saving feats that he’s not surprised to receive a text that says, _Okay._

. . .

Twice is a coincidence, but Stiles wanted to create a pattern. He could afford it now that his dad was elbows-deep in work with all the deaths and missing people the Alpha pack left in their wake. So on Tuesday he shows up for the third time in Derek’s place and tucks in a microwave dinner he brought over. On Wednesday he has his laptop with him and he does work while Derek exercises the lights out of himself, and when he didn’t succeed four hours and five million push-ups later, Stiles had pushed him in the bathroom to shower and sleep right after and threatened to get under the spray with him if he didn’t. He does this for a week and a half.

Sometimes he gets Derek to eat, and other times he doesn’t. But he always, always ends up in bed with him. This is his pattern, established by him and learned by Derek. Stiles doesn’t know why the older man has accepted this so easily, barely even has it in him to figure out why he set it in the first place, but he knows how dark the bruises under Derek’s eyes look when he doesn’t - _couldn’t_ \- come over. So he keeps coming back, keeps soaking up the sun by the large bay windows while Derek makes call after call to contacts Stiles didn’t even know he had who could potentially help track Erica and Boyd down. 

He brings dinner, tried to make it in the tiny kitchen once, but accidentally burned himself bad enough Derek had wolfed out and threw out his own butane burner like it was an enemy he had to protect Stiles from. He doesn’t try cooking again after that. But he does try harder at working with Deaton who promised him he could try to scry for the Betas’ location, but they come up with nothing every time and Stiles goes back to Derek’s place banging the door shut. 

And he will say, “I’m sorry, I’ll try again tomorrow,” and on good days Derek will only nod and say “I believe you,” but on bad days - days when Stiles honest-to-goodness tears up in frustration and sobs once or twice - they don’t bother with dinner, and Derek will only whisper “Come to bed,” and he will let himself be tugged along like the first day when their roles were reversed. 

On the bad days he lies to his father so much that dad doesn’t even bother responding to his texts anymore. Sometimes he struggles to remember the last time he slept in his own room. On the bad days, he finds purchase on Derek’s torso like he can hold on enough for the both of them. And Derek will let him, will press his lips on the crown of Stiles’ head and Stiles will feel all of five years old trying to battle monsters he’s not ready to look under the bed for yet. 

(Even though he has. Even though he still has the ghost of Peter’s mouth on his wrist and the bruise Kali left on his hip.)

It’s on a particularly non-descript day when Stiles establishes his new pattern. 

He still hasn’t had any luck in finding Boyd and Erica, but he doesn’t feel as crushed today by this either. Still, he went home to Derek’s loft (he seems to have carved himself residency here, telling by the drawer that’s dedicated to his shirts and pens and spare boxers now, when did that happen?) where the man was already unpacking Thai take-out, TV playing idly in the living room of a show they spent an entire night watching (arguing over) last week.

There is something about the sight of Derek in thread-bare pajamas laying out a spread of Stiles’ favourite orders on the tiny dining table that twinges at something in his chest. 

His bag slips from his shoulders and the keys to the Jeep clatter on the coffee-table, and Derek only had a second to look up before Stiles had his mouth on his. 

Derek makes a sound of surprise and Stiles’ brain catches on this like a hook, his heart thundering so loudly in his chest and his brain thinking _fuck fuck_ _did I fuck up_ but the thoughts melt out his ears when he feels hands grabbing him by the waist, hefting him up in a show of strength that has his hope surging, depositing him on the table as Derek’s mouth is suddenly so responsive and skilled and _real_. Belatedly, he registers that his ass is next to a container of pad thai that he really doesn’t want to go to waste, so he breaks off the kiss to whisper fervently, “Bed, _take me to bed_ ,” and he only has a heartbeat’s second to wrap his legs around Derek’s hips when they make the short travel from table to bedroom. 

He half-expects to be dropped unceremoniously on this mattress that he knows better than his own now, but instead, Derek lays him down gently, looks down at him with pupils blown so wide with an affection that makes him feel like he’s being bedded on his fucking wedding night. His spine rolls down vertebrae by vertebrae where it gets cradled by the memory foam (it has his box-spring at home beat any day), and he becomes hyper aware of the hand on the nape of his neck and the other that burns like a brand high on his thigh assisting his descent. 

For a moment Derek doesn’t do anything when Stiles is fully laid down on the bed, just stares down at him like he’s not all there, so Stiles asks, “Is this okay?” which jars Derek from his thoughts but still doesn’t prompt more reaction than that, and it makes Stiles hold his breath the way his Aunt Helen held her firstborn - _carefully, fearfully, with reverence._ Derek’s hair is haloed by the sparse light overhead, and he’s looking rough where he doesn’t look pale and breakable. Weathered and stormed, bleached pale by the sun. 

It’s what compels Stiles to say, “I’m right here with you. This is okay.” 

He reaches out to take the handholds of Derek’s cheekbones, urging him close, closer, closest god, _please._ When their lips are a hair's breadth away from each other, Derek says against his, “Tell me no. Stop me if you only want this for one night.” 

Stiles feels his heart trip on his own ventricles. 

His answer comes by a tilt of his chin and a wet-sounding kiss, where his tongue finds the seam of Derek’s mouth and slides against another tongue, hot and insistent and beautifully grounding. Derek tastes like protein shake and the toffee Stiles buys from the Ministop near this place, and he wonders why he didn’t do this sooner, didn’t have half the courage he had today to take a leap at something so inevitable. He wonders but he forgets why, forgets the doubt and the hesitance and leaves it between his two front teeth where Derek’s tongue flicks at the back of it. 

He gasps when Derek’s hips undulate the barest of rhythms, sending a sensation so pleasurable up his body he swears he sees white behind his closed eyelids. His bottom lip gets sucked into a warm mouth and his focus is reduced to responding to the gyration of the older man’s hips and he’s whispering, _“Oh god, fuck, how is this already so good,”_ and Derek takes a minute to lick over his inflated bottom lip to respond, “You drive me _nuts,_ making this bed smell like you and me,” he grounds down so deeply Stiles cries out, “You have no idea how long I’ve wanted you like this.” 

“Yeah.” Stiles breathes out, not knowing what to do with his hands and his face and his _everything_ because Derek’s got Stiles’ jeans open and his cock is rubbing against the thin fabric of Derek’s clothed dick in sweet, sweet contact. “Want you,” he continues, chasing Derek’s mouth into a sloppy kiss they’re both too busy grinding together to really engage in, says against it, “want you to fuck me, probably.” 

“Probably?” Derek inquires, sounding playful and serious at the same time. He punctuates this with a slow roll. Stiles keens and figures he must have said something wrong, because Derek is suddenly lifting up to brace his arms on either side of Stiles to hover over him and the loss of contact is almost unbearable to his achingly hard cock. But Derek only uses this sparse distance to nose under Stiles’ jaw, breathing in deeply and biting delicately at his skin. “You need to tell me what you want, baby. I can’t act on a probably.” 

Stiles has never been called that before, not by someone whose dick is in such close proximity to his, and definitely not by someone who sounds so enchanted by the thought of fucking him. Stiles can empathise though, he’s plenty enchanted himself. 

“I -” he breathes around a moan when Derek’s tongue finds his ear, “I want you to. I’ve - _oh god there -_ I want it slow, ‘s my first time.” 

At once, Derek stills. He pulls back and a hundred emotions seem to pass by his face in the span of two seconds. Stiles instinctively tightens his hold on the back of Derek’s neck and his strong shoulders.

“ _Don’t,”_ he starts, “don’t let me go. Don’t let me go Derek or I _swear to God_ I will fall the fuck apart.” He meets the older man’s gaze and he puts his heart on the line when he says, “I’m not your downfall, I’m - I _know_ what you’re thinking. I want you, I’m of sane mind and clear heart and _you_ are not _my_ goddamn downfall, you got that?” 

And it must be okay, because Derek’s expression softens and he nods before he swoops down to kiss Stiles so good and deep it makes him quiver. They both exhale and inhale at the same time, and just like this it feels like they’re sipping mouthfuls of each other’s hope. Stiles finds his hands palming Derek’s erection and relishes in the low, almost powerful groan this pulls out of Derek. He presses his palm against the werewolf’s belly to get it past the waistband of his boxers, slipping down to fully take the girth of Derek’s cock in his hands. It’s fleshier when it’s uncut, apparently. 

“ _Fuck,”_ Derek grits out, pressing his forehead against Stiles’ as he breathes deeply through the first few languid strokes. The angle isn’t comfortable, but Stiles feels something close to empowerment when he feels the first dribble of precum against his thumb. It eggs him on to grip more firmly, to spread the barest amount of wetness around and make it good for Derek. He rejoices when the older man moans, and Derek tells him, “ _Shit_ hold on, you need to stop. I can’t fuck you if I finish.” 

He kisses Stiles like he’s promising something. “You ever use your fingers?” he asks. He pushes himself up and straddles the younger man’s hips. 

“Few times,” Stiles answers and swallows at the sight of Derek’s nudity when he pulls off his shirt and pushes down his pajamas to free his cock. He’s so gorgeous it makes Stiles want and ache and give in and give up. 

“Did you like it?” Derek asks, trailing a hand against the side of Stiles’ face only to breach his mouth with a thick finger. “Take this in your mouth for me,” he instructs, and Stiles sucks on it on instinct and nods his response. 

“Anything bigger?” 

Stiles answers around his finger, “I wish.” 

Derek laughs, and it’s amused and carefree and not even sexy. But it’s bright, and Stiles hasn’t heard him laugh outside of the shows they watch from time to time. He feels paper-thin like this, so easily collapsible and vulnerable to this man who could slash his paper heart to ribbons but won’t. Derek climbs off him to get a packet of lube from the bedside end table. His heart is jackrabbiting in his chest at the sight of it and the anticipation it brings. 

He pushes the rest of his jeans down and leaves it to pool on the floor but decides to leave his shirt on. Derek sits next to him and says, “It’ll be easier on your hands and knees. That alright?” 

Stiles knows this, and also knows how utterly vulnerable it’ll leave him to be naked on his hands and knees and that’s why he kept the shirt on. He arranges himself, feels a hot mouth press against his spine. “Just relax,” Derek says as he circles a finger on Stiles’ hole. The lube is hand-warmed, and the first digit is an intrusion Stiles isn’t unfamiliar with. But where his hands are thin, Derek’s feels thicker and much, much better at this angle. The second finger follows shortly after, and Derek takes his sweet time opening him up, scissoring and lazily loosening his rim, getting him accustomed to the breach and making him whisper, “It’s - _yeah good,_ another’s okay.” 

There’s three fingers in his ass by the time he feels Derek’s fingers scrape on his prostate, making his spine curve at the zinging sensation and his cock bob against his belly. Derek catalogues this reaction and pushes against his nub again. 

“Oh my _god_ that shouldn’t be legal,” Stiles says with his head bowed. 

“I really don’t want to talk about what’s legal right now,” Derek responds with an amused tinge to his voice. 

“Okay, that’s fair I walked right into that one - _oh fuck_ , you’re magic.” Stiles pushes back on his fingers, losing himself on the feeling of getting filled but not full _enough._ So he asks, “Can I have you now?” craning his neck to look back at Derek. What he sees on the older man’s expression makes his stomach swoop, because it’s so intense and awe-filled he forgets it’s _him_ Derek was placing that look on. 

Derek, whose super-hearing seems to not have picked up on the question, looking down at his own fingers disappearing inside and out of Stiles’ body. The soft and absolutely _filthy_ squelches of movement it makes stirs something heavy in Stiles’ pelvis, and it takes a few seconds to register that’s _his_ body, his slick-sloppy entrance, and it’s him accommodating Derek’s fingers so willingly that has this beautiful man looking enraptured at his own ministrations. 

It makes him groan low and his climax catches him completely by surprise. 

Hot ribbons of come stripes his own stomach and his eyes flutter shut as he rides out his orgasm. Derek doesn’t stop when Stiles comes down from it, panting heavily and it bursts, spine caving in to let his chest slump on the mattress. He’s still reeling from his release when the first press of a cock at his entrance makes him gasp. 

In hindsight, coming before the first penetration was probably a good idea. He’s loose like this, but the new intrusion is still so overwhelming and painful because Derek is _big_ and porn didn’t prepare him for actually taking a dick up his ass for the first time. It’s definitely not a moan and a grunt and the immediate pistoning of hips; it’s Derek running a hand soothingly down his spine as his body learns to open up for Derek’s length, trembling in the feeling of entirely losing control and bestowing it to Derek who seems to be the only thing holding him together. It’s Derek doubling over his back and whispering, “You’re taking it so good, baby, so good,” and Stiles _is_ taking it because he _wants to be so good._

He didn’t even know he had a praise kink until right fucking now. 

There’s sweat beading on his forehead when Derek bottoms out. 

“Okay?” He asks. His hands are tight and bruising on Stiles’ hips. 

Stiles could only nod against the sheets when the slow, nearly incremental pace starts. It starts and it stops immediately when he tenses up, Derek pressing soothing kisses on his back, and it starts again and this goes on for a long, feverish while until he finally feels like he doesn’t want it to _ever stop._ His cock starts filling up again with every thrust that brushes nicely against his prostate, and he’s only half-aware of the sounds that are getting fucked out of him because _someone_ sounds like a porn star right now and he’s slightly aware it’s him. 

The big hands curled on his hips twitch spastically up and down like Derek’s trying too hard to rein his wolf in, and at one point when he thrusts in so deep Stiles feels it up to his fucking _throat_ theres a set of claws pointed at the soft flesh of his obliques. It makes him suck in a loud breath and feels it gone just as fast as it came in, Derek shushing his surprise and sounding equally as punched-out when he assures, “Can’t hurt you, I’m sorry. Won’t - _fuck, so tight -_ I won’t hurt you.” 

And Stiles keeps taking, because he believes in this. He believes Derek won’t hurt him and trusts the way Derek eventually pounds into his ass in an increasingly harried pace that when they both come apart he can be put back together by the same hands. 

Stiles balances on one forearm as he jacks himself off in a punishing pace, because he wants to come and he wants it now, and finally, fucking _finally_ Derek’s hips still where he’s buried deep and when he comes Stiles follows him a few seconds after. 

It was the first of many, many trysts. 

. . .

Things change and also they don’t. 

Dad is constantly tired and weary enough to ignore Stiles’ suspicious absence in the house, weary enough that the nights they do eat dinner together they skip over the bad parts of their week and actually have a good time. The Sheriff never fails to mention how much he’s missed his son. 

Lydia joins Stiles in Deaton’s office in their attempts to keep scrying for Erica and Boyd, and Stiles leaves Scott to worry over his and Allison’s car crash of a love story. Days pass by with the absence of the Betas ringing loudly in their ears, the silence they took with them where it was once filled with Erica’s cackling and Boyd’s deep voice so palpable. 

Derek comes close to giving up one night, and Stiles brews them both coffee at two in the morning and reminds Derek Mrs. Reyes is still dropping by the Sheriff’s Department to get updates on her missing persons report. 

Things change and they keep changing so much that Stiles can’t hold onto the memory of ever hating Derek Hale. Because he can’t hate him in the light of the moon, sipping on a chipped mug with his body coiled tight from where it leans on the kitchen counter, mourning the first pack that was taken from him through the second one he lost. He can’t hate him when he holds Derek in their fretful sleep, can’t hate him when he’s being fucked within an inch of his life on the couch and that one time on the dining table. He can’t hate him when Derek comes back home one night with a heavy set in his shoulders, looking fearful when he approaches Stiles with a box in hand. Inside of it is a ring with a triskelion extending elegantly from the brass band. 

His heart stops at the sight, and Derek must have heard this because he says, “I’m not proposing to you,” even though he takes Stiles’ left hand in his and inserts the ring on the finger that supposedly has an artery connecting to the heart. He says, “I’m keeping you safe the only way I know how.”

“Is it magic?” Stiles wonders, gauging the tan metal sitting so starkly on his pale finger. It’s snug, not at all a perfect fit, but feels enough like it belongs. 

“Yes,” Derek answers. “It belonged to every Hale Alpha.” 

Stiles looks past his splayed out hand to frown at Derek. “Then you shouldn’t be giving it to me, you idiot. Aren’t I going to get haunted by your family or something?” 

Derek shakes his head - and this part Stiles doesn’t forget; this part is the memory that replaces every other memory of hating Derek Hale altogether - and he says, “If I lose you, too, I’m not surviving it this time.” 

He’s starting to wonder how much things have changed that this now rings true even to him, too. 

. . .

Stiles doubts a lot, doubts the shelf life of this little euphoric bubble they’ve created out of each other. Derek calls it dating, asks him, “Do you want to see that move you haven’t stopped talking about?” and Stiles feels so absolutely guilty when he tries to come up with a lie that can cover his fear of a Deputy on duty seeing them on a date. But Derek only ducks his head shyly, says, “Right, it’s stupid. Rewatching Parasite is probably better.” 

And Stiles’ heart aches. 

It aches when he wonders how long he has before Derek realises dating Stiles the Underage Wonder is an addition to his laundry list of bad ideas. Because Stiles not only has the entire Beacon Hills police force watching him, he has something as mundane as school going on for him in-between running for his life and playing house in Derek’s place. In February, he had studied so intensely for a midterm exam he forgot Derek had asked him to eat dinner at his place. He ends up getting startled by the sound of footfalls by his bedroom window, where Derek stands with a sour expression on his face and three roses in hand. 

“What?” Is the intelligible thing he says. 

“What do you mean what?” Derek grits out his teeth. 

Stiles is confused, _discombobulated_. He’s got the entire history of the cold war swimming in his head and red-marked papers balanced on his thighs, and he’s staring at his werewolf boyfriend’s murder eyebrows and the flowers in his hands. 

And then it hits him. 

“Shit. _Shit.”_ He shucks off the papers and bounds over to Derek, trips once on his computer chair, and he holds onto the lapels of Derek’s leather jacket. “Derek I - I forgot, it’s just this stupid fucking test I have tomorrow and fucking _Stalin._ I swear to you I didn’t mean to stand you up.” 

Derek furrows his eyebrows and grunts like he’s a goddamn caveman. 

“I’ll make it up to you,” Stiles promises. “I’ll romance the shit out of you right after I finish my midterms.”

The line between Derek’s eyebrows softens as he sighs and reins Stiles in for a hug that the younger man crashes into. 

“It’s fine, school is important. I didn’t know you had a test,” Derek says. “But someone has to eat all the curry I had delivered.” 

“That I can definitely do,” he says decidedly. He’s got a headache the size of Texas and ink on his fingertips, but he also has that brass ring on his finger (“It’s what all the cool kids are wearing now, Dad, jewelry is _in_ ) and an extra key to Derek’s loft. And apparently, he has a window to Derek’s surprisingly romantic soul with the way he hurt him by forgetting today was motherfucking Valentine’s Day. Nothing gave it away to him, not even the obnoxiously red hearts lining the school halls yesterday, because he is all sorts of busy trying not to crack under the pressure of exams and his dad’s sneaking suspicions and the memory of Boyd’s zamboni. 

It aches when Dad asks him what he’s been up to on any given day and mentions the steadily growing absence of Scott. 

“Been keeping yourself busy, son?” Dad remarks when he drops by for Saturday lunch

Stiles is seventeen and he’s a little - a _lot -_ way in over his head, because he’s got Derek’s shirt stuffed under his pillow and his father’s distrust coiling heavily in his gut every time the Sheriff knocks on the door to hear another lie. But see, Scott hasn’t been returning Stiles’ calls and Erica’s breaking his heart, so he’s going to keep going back to Derek’s shoddy loft and let himself be taken apart, and he’s going to keep giving, giving, _gone_ on the feeling of hot lips on the back of his neck and clawed hands promising him he’ll be held together at the seams. 

And it aches, but it’s going to be enough for now.

“You don’t know the half of it, old man!”

. . .

In the second week of summer, they find Boyd and Erica in a hunters’ nest in Sacramento. Seven hunters against their little rag-tag bunch of eclectic supernatural creatures, and then there’s Stiles, who learned how to use a shotgun and kill a man with it all in one day. 

And when it’s over, when the wolves had the wolfsbane bled out and burned at Deaton’s and Mrs. Reyes and Grandma Boyd get their children back, Derek heaves the deepest sigh of his life and falls into Stiles’ childhood bed. 

The box spring mattress creaks under their combined weight. Stiles is the Quaking to the Aspen tree, vibrating with the adrenaline that hasn’t left his body for three days since they slayed the cruel people who took their two werewolves. He’s proud of himself for holding his own but he can’t forget the switch that flipped in one of the hunters’ eyes when Stiles shot him neatly in between them. 

_Look, Dad. Just like how you taught me._

Stiles laughs maniacally at the fact that he’s skipped school to kill seven men and came home just in time for dinner with his father. He laughs until his abs start twinging and only then does he realise it’s dissolved into crying, something ugly-sounding and manic. He wipes at his nose and it comes away with watery snot, and for a second it doesn’t look like it, looks more like the deep red blood he got on his hands when he made that first kill. 

This is when Derek pulls him against his broad chest, that was three days ago peppered with festering wolfsbane burns but now is smooth and new. Stiles wishes he could be new, too. He wishes he could turn 18 and suddenly wash his hands under the sea the way MacBeth yearned to. He could write a play on the tragedies that have popped up in their lives the day Kate Argent murdered the Hales. But he won’t, probably shouldn’t write these things down, probably should just let himself sob into the meat of Derek’s forearm where it’s buckled across the front of Stiles’ trembling shoulders. 

There should probably be no recorded words tonight for the grief he takes to bed with him, for the guilt that crescendos in the lobes of his mind where it greets the memory of his mother’s death. And now this new life of his is on its way to catch up on the train of guilt, ready to ram into his well-being and batter it to shards. (He had a metaphor going on here, where did it go?)

Here. He’s here. He’s exhausted and traumatised and he’s listening to the words (there goes the words, he can trust these words) Derek presses into the tender lobe of his ear, “We’re okay now, we’re safe. You’re safe, baby, it’s over.” 

He cries and he aches and he _doubts_ like all hell that he’ll ever be okay and he listens. The cicadas have taken root in the trees tonight, trilling their midnight song. He does nothing but listen to the heart beating strongly against his cheek. He listens to the shushing that eventually sounds louder than his own sobbing, and when the night stills, Derek kisses his wet cheeks and tells him, “I love you, thank you.”

. . .

He senses a new pattern burning on the horizon. 

Stiles kills his first wayward Omega in the Preserve on his way to retrieve Rowan bark. A part of him wants to buy himself a damn medal for defending himself without another wolf around, and another part of him wants to bury the calibre .45 that carries wolfsbane bullets six feet underground.

He does neither of this. Instead, he hits speed dial 2 and tells Derek, “I need help burying a body.” 

It says a lot about their lives that Derek comes to his aid without even a follow-up question. 

Later, in the privacy of the loft, he looks down at his hands and confesses, “I didn’t regret killing any of them. The hunters, this omega.” He takes a shuddering breath. “What does that make me?” 

Derek looks down at him from where he’s balled up in the corner of the couch, eyes conflicted and face open. “It makes you a protector of your life. A protector of the pack and the territory.” 

“Does it make me good?” 

Derek joins him on the cushions, enveloping Stiles’ cold limbs with his warmth. He feels small, a little breakable. A lot accountable for the deaths he has and will cause if it meant keeping his family safe. He’d do it again. 

“It makes you a hero,” Derek insists against the nape of his neck. “It makes you wonderful, and it makes me wonder what I did to deserve your loyalty.”

And Stiles thinks of all Derek has gone through, the lives he’s seen taken away and the lives he’s had to take to preserve his own. He thinks of the abandoned train car he lived in for the purpose of self-punishment and the way the world keeps testing out how many times it can break Derek Hale before he finally refuses to bounce back. 

“Everything,” Stiles starts, pressing further into the embrace. “You did everything.”

. . .

He breaks the pattern of doubting their relationship on an evening in July. He’s officially been eighteen for three months now, and the Sheriff heard from Deputy Tamara who heard from Deputy Carl who heard from sweet Grandma Millicent in Lander Street that his little boy Stiles got cozy with the grown-up Hale boy at the movies, and aren’t they just the handsomest pair? 

He breaks the pattern when John wipes his hand down his face and sighs out, “Kid, I don’t know, I’m feeling seven different kinds of wrong-footed here. But...you’re of age, you’re plenty smart, and you’re even more stubborn than your mother.” 

“So is that a yes to meeting-the-boyfriend dinner tomorrow?” 

“Tell him to use the goddamn front door.” 

He breaks the pattern when Derek starts spending more time on weekdays in the Stilinski house now, making baseball commentary with the Sheriff over cold beers while Stiles smiles at them from the kitchen window one successful dinner after another.

He bludgeons the pattern of doubt and uncertainty when he sinks down on Derek’s length on a weekend night, tucked safely in Derek’s bedroom, gasping for the breath that’s being stolen from him. Derek is so large underneath his own tall frame, open and trusting and devastating. He’s so beautiful it hurts. 

Stiles rides him with wonder clouding his vision, thinking about how he gets to keep this, this man, this new apartment he’s moved into, the little drawer on the old dresser that’s slowly but surely getting heavy with shirts and boxers and even more stupid pens. 

“Fuck, I love you,” he says breathily and witnesses the sweetest of smiles curling on Derek’s lips. It’s the push that drives Stiles wild and he bounces on his cock with a newfound fervor, fucking himself and taking control and taking, taking, being taken _apart._ When he comes, he does it with his mouth crying out into the heat of Derek’s kiss. He’s pliant and virtually useless when Derek starts pushing him up and down with his hands as the older man chases his own release, his own coming apart. And when he does, he bites down at Stiles’ neck possessively as he shoots his load deep inside Stiles. They love it, _by god_ do they love it. 

. . .

In August, Stiles admits, “I’d do anything for you.” It’s as good a day as any to admit that, he reasons. The furniture in the apartment is slowly coming together, and they've kept busy painting the walls a pleasant shade of cream the entire day. They find dinner on their mobile phones, slowly decimated the deliveries on a wobbly IKEA dining table. 

Derek looks at him and smiles that sweet grin when they’re finally resting, entangled in the bed. He looks resplendent like this. It makes Stiles dizzy. 

“I mean it,” Stiles says, poking a hand on the dimple of Derek’s cheek. “Anything. Forever.” 

How could they be anything less? 

“I know, baby,” Derek says, nipping at the proffered finger. “I've got you, too.” 

And he does. He's got Derek's brass ring and his father's approval and Erica's ringtone on his phone. He's got this apartment and this future and there's this pack, this territory. And he's eighteen, still way in over his head, but he holds his breath the way he will one day hold his firstborn - carefully, happily, hopefully. 

_fin._

  
  
  
  


**Author's Note:**

> hope you liked it! leave a message under here, i ADORE hearing from you all. Click on my pseudonym for more of my sterek works
> 
> Hang out with me on[tumblr](https://obscenitied.tumblr.com/) and [the sterek discord server](https://discord.gg/YuaTPfZ)


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